Category: BCM240

Twas a dark and stormy Tuesday afternoon and the University of Wollongong was swarming with malnourished and impoverished students. I was tiptoeing slowly in the shadows. I heard footsteps behind me; my pace quickened. The footsteps broke into a run. I look around at the gloomy corridors of building 19; where do I run? “Hey […]

Netflix: it’s at all of our fingertips. Grandad doesn’t use it, Mum does use it, but doesn’t understand the dire social consequences of saying she’s having ‘Netflix and chill’ with her children, and I have the wonderful world of closed-garden, digital film libraries down pat – how’s that for an illustration of a generational gap? My use […]

My mother still talks about the time, a good fifteen years back, I visited the local cinema with my Nanna. “Did Grandpa go too?” Mum asked me. “No, someone might eat chips”, I informed her gravely, in all my five-year-old seriousness. What I was referring to, through my mother’s wanton hysterics, was no doubt the […]

Last week I interviewed my grandparents about the role of television in their lives (check out my post here), as did many of my classmates. I was astonished at the extraordinary insight I received from my Grandma and Grandad; their story felt so real. However it was difficult to fathom the extreme differences between television then and […]

The year was 1956. It was a warm Friday night in the coastal town of Cronulla and the Goddard family (who consisted of my grandmother, Sue, her younger sister, Kathy, and their parents, Ethel and Tom) were crossing their front lawn to join their neighbours, the Telfers, to watch television. Resources were scarce and the family could not purchase […]

Do I control the media? Or does the media control me? Earlier this year I saw my great-Aunt perform in a local concert. I dutifully turned off my mobile phone prior to the commencement of the show. During the intermission I pulled it out again, to distract me from the masses of grey-haired penguins who smelt […]